The Adoption of Additive Manufacturing Technology in Sweden

This article analyzes the adoption of additive manufacturing (AM) technologies in Sweden. The data set consists of a recent and representative sample of Swedish AM users (companies, universities, and research institutes). The authors investigate two questions. First, what are the current applications of AM in Sweden (e.g., rapid prototyping [RP], production)? Second, what are the factors that can explain the variation in AM adoption among the users? Using a regression analysis technique, the main findings are as follows. (i) There is a variation among users' choice of AM application, and the majority of users are expanding their AM applications beyond RP. (ii) There are two factors that positively affect the decision of firms to expand classical RP and incorporate production and management as well. These two factors are using multiple AM technologies (as opposed to single fused deposition modeling technology) being small companies. The authors discuss the implication of these results.